September 3rd 1943
by Pearlislove
Summary: September 3rd, 1943. Cairnholm Island, Wales. The most important place, the most important day, the most amazing story.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Heavily inspired by Plengpoonyapa's lovely Miss P stories because they love my stories, and I love their stories.**

 **Also dedicated to the very same lovely person, because half my Miss p fics wouldn't be written without them.**

 **P.S Going to have a small epilogue, hence it's marked as 'unfinished'. It will be changed once the epilogue is posted.**

"Miss Peregrine!"

"Miss Peregrine!"

The clock is 9.03 in the evening, and all Alma's children were supposed to have been in bed for an hour earlier, when two of them comes knocking on her door. They don't sound frightened, but they're screaming her name over and over again as if it'll make her open the door faster.

It took Alma two minutes of considering the fact that she'd just changed into her nightgown and removed her make-up, preparing to go to bed exactly one hour and five minutes after her charges, before she could convince herself to open the door.

She knew it was going to take some strong threats to stop the children waiting on the other side from going around and gossiping with all the other children about how they saw her in her nightgown. But it wasn't exactly like she could ignore them until they went away.

They were smart, her children, and she had taught them well. If they were staying up after their bedtime and knocking on her door, they had to have a good reason for it, and she was going to find out what.

As soon as Alma opened the door, her charges falls through the door and into her private quarters, one a lot more literally than the other, and both of them forcing her to back away as to not be overrun.

Emma, who seem to have either forgotten or abandoned her lead shoes, tumble through the air and spinning several lapses before landing with her feet and hands on the ceiling, sitting there and looking like an overgrown blonde spider.

Ever the observant, Alma can't help but notice that her yellow pyjamas are way too small, stomach sticking out and the edge of the pants barely brushing her knees, and she make a mental note to herself to get a new pair for the girl as soon as possible.

"Miss Peregrine! We need to talk to you!" Olive exclaim, gesturing to herself and Emma with her gloved clad hands, the motion growing big even though she try not throw around her arms. It's quite a bizarre look, with her red hair braided to avoid it getting tangled, a too big blue nightgown that used to belong to Alma herself put on her petite frame, and dark gloves covering her arms to her elbows. Alma doesn't mind, though. No one was really supposed to see you while sleeping, and therefor you had the right to look however you wanted.

"Of course. Just a moment Miss Abrolhos" She smile, and then she focus at Emma, frowning instead. "Miss Bloom, get down from the ceiling this instant!"

"Can't, my boots are in my room!" Emma replied, smiling in a way that told the headmistress it was most definitely planned beforehand, and she quickly reach in under her bed to pull out the extra shoes she keep there, holding them up for her charge to see.

"Miss Bloom, proper ladies do not sit on the ceiling, so put on your shoes or I will not speak to neither you nor Miss Abrolhos." Getting tired of dealing with her rambunctious charge, she give her an ultimatum. Poor Olive's face filled with dread at this, and Emma sigh, finally give up her seat on the ceiling, grabbing the shoes and strapping them to her feet.

"I put on my shoes! Now you got to listen to us!" Emma's facial expression suddenly goes from angry to terrified in the blink of an eye, and Alma can see the same expression mirrored in Olive's face as well. It make her worried, and she wonders what have happened to scare her brave girls.

"Miss Peregrine haven't heard any of the planes passing overhead all night What if they're going to bomb us?" Olive asked, nervously trying to fiddle with her hair but finding it hard to when it was braided.

"Yeah, what if they try to kill us tonight?" Emma agreed, persistent.

Alma hadn't noticed the fact that the by now all too familiar sounds were gone, but now that Olive mentioned it, the eerie silence was all too easy to notice, and Alma wondered how she could even miss it.

Being half bird, she had a hearing that was ten, perhaps twenty times better than her children, and yet, it had been her children that had heard what was missing, not her.

She could blame having her hands full with dealing with Horace, who had suffered an exceptionally bad nightmare the night before, and Enoch, who had been extra grumpy due to sleep deprivation, but she knew the truth was that she had slipped up and missed it.

It didn't matter, though, if she could just pull herself together when the situation called for it.

It was suspicious and perhaps dangerous that the planes weren't passing overhead, and she felt the fears she'd carried in the back of her mind since the day they saw the first German plane in the sky sending her thoughts into overdrive.

She needed to do something, and she needed to do it now. She couldn't risk the children's health, their **lives** … not when she promised for them to always be kept safe. But what is she going to do? Maybe, she thinks, if they get going right now, they could get to town, hiding there in case the Germans decided to start dropping the bombs on them.

She deliberately tried to ignore the voice in her head telling her that if the Germans started dropping their bombs, there wouldn't be much that could possibly save them.

It was more important to keep the children safe than anything else, and if the bombs never came, they could just walk back to the house after all.

"You're right. Go get Enoch and the children. Tell them to out on their gas masks and meet up by the centaur bush. We'll walk into town tonight to be safe." Her voice is strict, neutral as always, but it's hardly helping the terrified teenagers in front of her. If possibly, it's scaring them more.

She can see the fear in the girls faces ten folding as they hear her instructions, and though she doesn't blame them for it, they still quickly try to compose themselves, nodding in acknowledgement of what she said.

"Yes Miss Peregrine!" They answered in unison, immediately rushing out the door to carry out her instructions, looking forward to repressing their fear through doing something even remotely useful.

In their rush, none of the two girls notice their headmistress facial expression, nor did they seem to note that she closes the door behind them, and Alma feel grateful for it, because not even she could keep the terror off her face as she tried to wrap her head around what was happening.

 _They might all get killed tonight_

Her first instinct as she is left alone is to sink down with her back against the door, but seeing as she's never been able to stay still for more than five minutes at the time, she instead result to pacing back and forth in front of her bed, making a mental checklist of everything she needed to do before leaving the house too.

She needed to get the children out of the house, with gas masks on in case they wouldn't make it to the village before the bombing started, and she needed to make sure that they were going to be alright, and have a safe place to hide from the hypothetical bombs.

She needed to get her pocket watch from her jacket and her own gas mask and the lamp from the kitchen and her Calendar clock from the livingroom and she needed to make sure everyone was there before they left.

Satisfied with her list of things to do, Alma quickly set out to do them, starting with grabbing her golden pocket watch from her jacket, and putting it in the pocket of her nightgown instead.

Each Ymbryne was given a clock upon finishing their education and setting out to start their own home, as a graduation present of sort. The clocks were used to channel and control their time-manipulating powers. She simply couldn't leave it behind, it was all but forbidden.

Next, she carefully open the bedroom door and step out into the hallway, her unclad foot landing in a pile of sheets that should have been in one of the children's room, not on the floor, and when she looked around, she can see that the entire place closest resemble some kind of warzone.

Most of her children are running from room to room, screaming and yelling and clinging to one another, some trying to grab coats and jackets and other practical things, while most of the smaller ones are just trying to find someone to hold their hand or carry them, to tell them that they were going to be alright in the midst of the utter chaos surrounding them.

Standing three doors down the hall, Claire immediately spot Miss Peregrine as she leave her room, running up to her and grabbing at her skirt, her brown teddy bear safely tucked in her armpit as she tug at the fabric which she has caught between her small fingers

"Please carry me?" She is stretching out her tiny hands, now, the teddy bear safely held in one of them, and Alma sigh, carefully bending down to pick her up before continuing on her way, rushing down the stairs with the girl on one arm and the other one holding onto the railing so she won't trip on the steep steps and hurt both herself and little Claire.

36 steps later, she in down on the ground floor, trying to decided if she should get the calender clock or the gasmask and the lamp first, but not coming to a conclusion before she's interupted.

"Miss P!" She turn around, and see Enoch coming, running down the stairs towards her. He's dressed in nothing but a pair of boxers and an incorrectly buttoned shirt, but appear not to care too much about it, balancing Bronwyn carefully on his left arm as he is extending his right towards the girl Alma is carrying. "Give me Claire, I'll take her outside."

When she look at him, he appear as cool and collected as always, but hearing how his thick accent is once more creeping into his speech, she knows he's probably as terrified as anyone else, if not more. Without much thought, she place the child she'd been holding on his other arm, making sure he can balance the two of them on his arms before fully letting go.

It feels almost sad to let go, like she's saying goodbye to the girl she's raised since her whole hand was smaller than Alma's thumb, but she push the thoughts aside. She was going to see the girl again, she was sure.

"Thanks. Go get your gas masks before you head outside!" She push him in the direction of the kitchen, instantly choosing to go to the living room instead, for some reason not wanting to be close to any her charges at the moment.

Giving Enoch Claire had made her feel oddly empty, like she was carving out and emptying the feelings she held for her charges in a trash can somewhere, leaving her heart hollow, because they were all she carried in there. All she loved.

The plan to stay away from her charges didn't hold out very well, though, as she opened the living room door only to have three of her charges come running out into the hallway. They got gas masks on their faces and coats put on top of their pyjamas and are all but ready to leave already, and as terrified she was to see them like that, it was also comforting to see that they were ready to leave, ready to be put in safety

Safety for her children was all she ever asked for.

"Miss Peregrine!" Horace exclaimed, snapping out of her thoughts and getting her attention. "Is it true they are going to bomb us? Is that why we have to leave?"

Alma pause, look at him, at his honest face that she's seen twisted in pain and anguish all too many times. She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't want to straight up admit the danger, lest she'd scare the child, or he'd connect it to any of his doomsday dreams he's had so often lately, but she didn't want to have to lie to him, either.

"We don't know. They might. We're going to head into town soon, just to be safe." She make her voice warm and kind, almost uncharacteristically so, in an attempt to calm down their, satisfied with not having to lie.

They really didn't know, if the bombs would come, or not.

Accepting the answer, Horace nodded, quickly joining Hugh and a gas mask and coat floating mid-air, which she assumed to be Millard, on their way through the long hallway.

The three of them are heading for the kitchen, from which they are hopefully planning to leave the house, and as soon as they're out of sight she walks into the living room instead, hoping to finally be able to be left alone.

It feels horrible that she want to be left alone, when in just a moment any of them might be dead and gone.

The beloved calendar clock, which also had been a gift from another Ymbryne, stood on the wooden table, the ticking clock hands showing that it was now 9.18, 15 minutes since they started this madness.

It felt like a lifetime.

Determined, she grabs the clock and lift it off the table, wedging it under her arm as she look for anything else she might want to bring with her to safety. Her eyes immediately fell on the black and white photo of her and her class on the Ymbryne academy, thirteen girls and two boys awkwardly positioned around and a paper moon with a angry-looking woman standing off to the side and glaring at them. Quickly, she reach out and grab it, her eyes falling on the photo of her and her children next to it and she grab that photo, too, before turning to leave the room.

She's only taken one step before she can hear the sky being filled with noise overhead, pain rushing through her head at the volume of it all, before quickly subsiding as the noise decreased.

"Miss Peregrine!"

"Miss Peregrine!"

It feels oddly deja vú when she hear the two girl voices calling out for her, and she stop just short of entering the kitchen as she sees Olive and Emma come running. There is no one else there, and Alma hope they've come to tell her that all the others are waiting outside so that they can get going.

"What are you doing here girls? I told you to go outside. I'll be there soon." She try to sound stern, but her concern and fear is visible in every word she speak. She knows they must have heard it too, and hate herself for not being able to control her emotions all of sudden.

"We know, all the others are waiting outside, but the bomb planes are coming back, you can almost hear them…" Olive says, eventually trailing off, Emma quickly picking up where she left off instead.

"And now we might get bombed to death, all of us, and we can't find Fiona **anywhere**!" Emma is yelling, sounds getting louder and the fears that was all but controlling them getting stronger. "We even looked in Enoch's lab in the basement! No one's seen her!"

An image flashed before Alma's eyes, a memory of a day long gone. Fiona had been hiding behind a yellow Rosebush while she and the twins played hide and seek. For reasons she couldn't recall, the girls normally neatly braided hair had been let out, and she was bare foot, a small smile resting quietly on her lips as the twins passed the bush without noticing her. Afterwards, Hugh had told Alma she cheated, because she made the bush grow while she sat there, but she had told him that winning a game wasn't everything, and the most important thing was to have fun. NOw that the memory hit her, it was vibrant, and happy, just like Fiona herself.

She had to find her.

"It's alright, I'll find her. You need to get moving, though. Get everyone to follow the rode to town and I'll meet you there when I found Fiona." She is quick, efficient, shooing them off before they get a chance to complain and instead heading off on her own mission.

She had to find Fiona, had to get her to safety before it was too late, even if it would come at the price of her own life. Her children would always come first, even before herself.

"Miss Fraudfelt! Fiona! Where are you? We need to leave!" As soon as she reach the upper floor, she call out for the girl, hoping that it would draw her out if she was in any of the bedrooms so that she wouldn't have to look through them all.

"Miss Peregrine!" It take two moments before anything happen, but then she's there, appearing in the doorway to the room furthest from Alma, a pot with a large tree plant in it in her hands.

Fiona had planted a tiny seedling in a pot in Abe's room the day he left, taking care of it every day and preparing it as a gift for the day he returned. He always loved christmas and pine trees, and Fiona, who had a hard time accepting her 'big brother' leaving, had promised to grow him his very own pine tree for when he came back.

They had all been smiling, And thanking her for the consideration and telling her he looked forward to it, but Alma saw what he was really thinking, for she was thinking the same.

Abe might not come back, and still, Fiona might as well have sacrificed her life for the plant she was going to give him when he came back, absolutely convinced that he was going to come back in a way Alma could never be.

"Fiona! We've been so worried about you, Olivia and Emma have been looking everywhere. Come on, we need to get out!" She grab Fiona, who she notice hasn't even gotten her gas mask on, by the wrist and start dragging her towards the stairs.

"You're not mad at me, are you? I couldn't leave Abe's gift! It took me weeks to get it this big, and I promised him a pine tree when he get back!" She is persistent, but also fearful, and Alma realise that she hasn't understood what was happening, because if she were, then surely the least of her problems would be the pine tree, and she'd rather be focused on the threat of being taken out of existence.

"I'm not mad at you, sweetie, but we need to get into town so we can be from the bombs."

"Enoch said it wasn't true! Are they really going to bomb us?!" Panic is welling up inside the little girl as she is suddenly speeding ahead of Alma, rushing down the stairs as fast as anyone possibly could without _falling_ down half the steps.

"I'm afraid so, dear, but it's going to be okay. Just get your gas mask and go outside, will you?" While Alma was grateful Enoch had tried to quell the younger girl's worries, it was not good that it had lead to her not taking the threat serious.

However, it didn't matter, because it was going to be alright. Fiona and her was going to get out in time, and then they'd just have to get to town and find the others, which hopefully wouldn't be too hard. When the children came down there, everyone would know where the came from, and she could easily find them if she just asked them. Fiona would even get to keep her little pine tree plant.

"Bloody hell! Olive! Emma! Where is Miss P and Fiona?" Enoch scream, frustrated, as she see the two older girls come running without neither of the persons they went back inside to get.

"We couldn't find Fiona! Miss Peregrine's gone to look for her! Here, give me Bronwyn!" Olive come running up to him, extending her arms to carry the brown haired girl on Enoch's right arm, seeing the exhaustion that he tried to hide clearly on his face and wanting to make it a little easier for him.

"Olive!" The little girl squealed happily, latching her arms around Olive's neck. She was normally so strong and independant, their little Bronwyn, mature and self-reliant in a way that went far beyond her age, but now she was almost as needy as Claire. Olive didn't mind, though, and just made sure to secure her grip of the girl's waist as Enoch repositioned Claire in his own arms.

"The bird told us to get going! She and Fiona'll come and meet us there." Emma cut in, joining the group a few minutes after Olive still panting from the run. "So i suggest we get going now because I seriously can't run in these things!" She was pointing to her lead shoes, and while they would normally have laughed, the joke now fell completely flat.

"Ooo?" The twins ask, looking at her expectantly, and Emma offer her hands for them to take. They're too big to be carried, like Claire and Bronwyn, but still smaller than the other boys who was now following Olive, letting the fire on her hand give them light and guided them like a burning torch defying the thick darkness of night with it's light.

For a while, it all seemed good. They were scared, of course, terrified even, and at least the elder ones were made extremely uncomfortable by the absence of their headmistress, but they were moving, and the planes they feared oh so much had yet to be seen.

They should have enjoyed the moment, because the fragile peace was shattered less than a moment later, when Claire saw something.

"Bomb! German bomb!" She screamed, her quiet little voice immediately attracting everyone's attention as they turned around and, as Claire said, saw the very first bomb plane passing overhead.

Three more bomb planes followed, but no real bombs, just them passing overhead as they always did, both day and night. It brought back the peace, made them seem safe again, and for a moment, they were all considering going back to the house, to their home.

"Is this it? Can we go back now?" Hugh, as innocent as a twelve year old kicked out by his parents could be, asked, looking up hopefully at Olive. She frowned, uncertain. They were all cold and wet from the rain and overall terrified, and a cup of tea and a blanket would be extremely helpful, but she was unsure if it was safe.

Miss Peregrine had told Emma and her to get them into town, no matter what. Had told them their life might depend on it.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she can see Enoch looking at her disapprovingly, as if to warn her of getting their hopes up, and she doesn't dare to answer Hugh.

"No, not yet." Horace surprise everyone by speaking up, shaking his head and staring into the ground in order to avoid eye contact. "It's not what I saw!"

It was a moment of sudden silence as the others tried to understand what he was saying. He had seen this, all of this, in his head, in one of his dreams. In one of dreams he never showed them, but they all knew he had.

"You saw this?! You didn't even fucking say anything you fancy little…" Enoch was very nearly hitting Horace in the head, blind with rage at the thought of Horace finding himself too good to share his most important dreams with them, even though it might help them.

"Enoch please stop! Let him be!" Olive was there, of course, trying to hold him back from hitting the younger boy with her free arm, fearing he would seriously injure the other one if he did.

"I CAN'T KNOW IF THINGS I DREAM OF WILL HAPPEN OR NOT BEFOREHAND! I HAVE NIGHTMARES, NOT PROPHECISE!" Horace screamed finally, pushed over the edge as he resign to hysterically sobbing, shivering and terrified. "Miss Peregrine said it was...never...never happening!"

The night had been extremely stressful for all of them, and at this point they were all lost. All the terror and dread had melted down into concrete within them, making them stuck in place and unable to move either way. They had barely gotten five hundred meters down the road, but they still ceased to walk, stopping, finding themselves tired and cold and emotionally exhausted only a stone-throw from their home.

"Guys! I'm here!" Fiona's voice reach them through the darkness, and suddenly they've woken up and are moving around again, but not because Fiona was finally safe, however happy they might be for her, but because of what was following in her wake.

There is planes appearing in the sky behind her, big bomber planes that make their presence known even in the inky darkness and blurry rain still cascading from the sky.

"Bloody hell! There's more airplanes coming! We're going to get fucking _nuked_!" Enoch is swearing, appearing nothing but angry but his arms tightening immediately around Claire, who's fallen asleep on his shoulder, and anyone who knew him well enough could read his fearfulness, if not for himself, but for the little girl.

"Are they going to bomb us _for real_ now?" Hugh ask, his hand holding tight onto Fiona's as she join the group, panting and with a large plant in her other arm.

"I don't want to die!" Bronwyn exclaimed, clinging tighter to Olive's nightgown, and the older girl absentmindedly patted her on the back, trying to make her feel safe, wanting to but not being able to tell the girl that she was definitely going to survive. She hated lying, even if it was for the greater good, and she couldn't guarantee that Bronwyn was going to survive.

"No one's going to die!" Emma declared, determined and glaring at the others, daring them to protest.

"Except Miss Peregrine!" It's Millard who scream, appearing behind Fiona, and Emma is about to scream that he's wrong, until she see where he's pointing. He's pointing to the sky, where they can see one of the bomb planes releasing something and sending it spiraling down towards the house.

It is a German bomb from a German Bomb plane, according to records from the time having been dropped on the Welsh Island of Cairnholm at 9.45 PM on the 3rd of September 1943, and forever changing the faith of ten peculiar orphans and their headmistress.

Though no one knew so, it changed the faith of everything and everyone on the tiny island.

When they thought back to that night, it was all a colorful blur of screaming and running and feelings of fear and dread for most of them, and not much else. But despite how little they remembered of the rest of the night, the moment the bomb came was still crystal clear to them all. Even Claire, who had been sleeping on Enoch's shoulder for almost an hour, had woken up in time to witness that specific moment, and was able to retell it in perfect detail.

After all, it was the moment they thought it was all over.

"Come on Miss P!" Fiona is calling for Alma, standing in the door as she was looking for the damn lantern in every cupboard and jar. She would have forsaken it, had it been anything else, but they need the light. Without it, it was downright life-threatening to even attempt walking down to town this late at night.

It was nowhere to be found, and Fiona was in more more and danger for every moment she waited, more so than if she just got going away from the house, so Alma make a quick decision and tell her to run.

"Run ahead, Fiona! Find the others, and I'll come when I found the lantern!"

"But Miss Peregrine, what about you? I'm not going to leave you!"

"JUST DO WHAT I TELL YOU!" She had never screamed at her charges before, not ever, and she hated it when she finally saw the girl running from the house, chased away not by the bomb risk, but by Alma herself. There's tears stinging in her eyes but she try desperately to push them back and ignore how much it hurt.

"Now, where's that damned lantern?" She try not to think too much of what she had just done, imagining that all would soon be forgotten, but she still can't deny the tiny woodpecker picking at her heart, constantly making it hurt more than it should for such a thing.

Her children and sister Ymbrynes sees her as strict and cold and collected, almost too much so, but they'd never know that the truth was the reversed. That she was too soft, and keeping strict rules for herself was the only thing that protected her heart.

Only, it meant she had to break her children's hearts in the process, and it broke her a thousand times more.

Finally, she see the lantern lying in a corner on the floor, wedged in between the wall and a cupboard, and she wonder what it's doing there, because she sure as hell didn't place it there, and the only explanation she can think of is the children knocking it down from the counter and not knowing where it went but fearing to tell her for whatever reason.

Exhausted, both mentally and physically, Alma drop to her knees in the corner, just thankful to be able to rest her legs for five minutes. She is just about to reach out for the katern it self, when she suddenly stop, noticing how badly her hand is shaking, the tremors soon spreading to the rest of her body.

 _BOMB!_

The tremors increase, and before she knows what's happening there is overwhelming noise in her ears, the noise of something falling, approaching their house fast and dangerous, maybe even deadly. The sound was getting an echoing effect in her head and blocking out everything else around her.

"Aaaah!" She scream, quiet but desperate, and she doesn't know what else to say, to do, because even if she knew what caused it the noise is paining her brain so to the point that it's incapacitating, throwing her over on her back as she couldn't keep herself upright. With her eyes clenched shut and her hands covering her ears she lay there on the floor, waiting for the inevitable end which she knew was soon coming.

Only it didn't come, and after another minute she can't help but notice the noise is gone, too, and her first thought, as ridiculous as it might be, is that she reached heaven.

Cracking one eye open, Alma recognise the old kitchen of her and the children's house, and she wonder what she's still doing there, for she knew must surely have been a bomb whose noise had filled her ears with that horrible sound.

There's the thought, the impossible thought, of course, telling her that the bomb hit somewhere else. That it hit her children instead. But it's unperceivable, as unperceivable as the fact that she was never going to see her brothers again or anything else she pushed into the back of her mind not to think about it, and instead she stand up and look around, intending to try and find out what _really_ happened.

As soon as she's up on her legs, her hand travel to her pocket, looking for her clock that's always there, attempting to sooth herself by listening to it's comforting tick-tock sound. Only when her hand reach out, it's not there, not at all, and she wonders where it is with sudden panic because _she can't lose it_ , but when she look around all that she sees is the photos and the calendar clock, all three of them safely stored on the kitchen counter. But the pocket watch is not, and it feels bad, because their situation is only worsening, and she's been considering making a loop for a while, but without the clock it's impossible.

A light clicking sound is heard as she take one step forward, and she quickly back off again, seeing the clock where her foot had been. The glass is cracked, but the hour hands were still moving so she knew it wasn't broken. As she bent down to pick it up, she noticed the side button was pressed in, when it previously had not.

It must have gotten pushed in when it fell out of her pocket.

If it fell out of her pocket when the intense noise in her head made her fall over, then…

She is running outside, everything she was so adamant to bring along with her forgotten as she ran out into the garden, and glanced up at the sky.

The raindrops were frozen, hanging in the air like glass pieces held in place by invisible wires, not one of them moving even millimeter. They were frozen in time, she knew, doomed to stay that way until the one who had frozen the place chose to either let it go, or to back time as far as she see fit.

Alma look around some more, feeling as though there is something she's missing, and then she sees the children standing not too far away, just on the other side of the pond. She wouldn't have to walk far to be able to reach out and touch them, and at first this make her angry, because they shouldn't have been anywhere near the house, but then she's scared, instead.

She can't see their faces, not one of them, because they all did as she said and put on their gas masks, but there's something in the way they are positioned, rigid and tense, and the way Claire and Bronwyn is stretching out their hands as if to physically touch their home, and Hugh and millard and Horace are clinging to Fiona and Emma as if they're scared they'll run away if they don't.

Something was so, so, so wrong.

Slowly, she turn around. She turn around and she almost scream when she sees what's got them so so scared, because there's a bomb balancing on the roof of their house. It's big and German marked and would most definitely have killed her and destroyed the house, had she not accidentally paused time.

It would still be able to kill her and destroy the house, if she didn't back time and create a loop.

Taking a deep breath, she try to collect herself. She took pride in always being prepared, always right on time with everything she did and following a carefully crafted schedule with exact times and dates for every single thing, it was they way she lived her life. Only now everything was upside down, and she had been seconds away from being killed by a German bomb. From abandoning her children in the only way that mattered.

She needed to create a time loop before the accidental time lock either broke by itself, of she couldn't keep it up anymore, and even though she knew it to be dangerous to do so when being exhausted like she was, there was no choice

It had to be now.

 _Place your hand around the clock, and the thumb on the button. Push it in, but not too hard._

Miss Avocets instructions echoed in her head, being brought up from somewhere deep within because she knew she needed them and she does as they tell her. She place her clock in the palm of her hand, closing her fingers around the frame and putting her thumb on the already pushed in button.

 _Carefully roll the button backwards as fast as you can, and do not stop until you backed as far as you wish to, or you hear the click. Remember that twenty-four hours is maximum, and any attempt at going further than that will break the clock and cause a smaller explosion. Please, do not do that._

She roll back the button, and back both time and the clock, faster and faster until she hear the click, and she stop, panting, staring at it in fear and waiting for it to explode, for her to have backed too far and for everything to be over.

But it doesn't, because she's backed time exactly twenty-four hours, and behind her, a new and old sunset is blooming.

She want to tell her children what she's done to protect them and their home. She want to come up and meet them and hug them as she seem them move towards her, because she love them more than anything elser, but her legs fail already on the first step and she pass out long before her children can reach her or she can reach them, still smiling because she saved them.

She really saved them.

They're screaming and crying, brought to the verge of hysteria as the bomb plane open its stomach, throwing out the huge bomb that is going to destroy their lives forever.

"MISS PEREGRINE!" Fiona and Emma's screams are the loudest of them all, piercing the air with a desperation that by far surpassed all other screams from their 'siblings', and hadn't it been for Hugh and Horace and Millard clinging to them and all but pinning them to the ground, they would already have been running towards the house and efficiently dooming themselves in the process.

They're all so caught up in the moment and all that it contains that they barely notice when the world stop, freeze, and they are suddenly are the only living and moving things there. They and the woman running out of their house.

It takes them but a moment to see that it is Miss Peregrine who's running out of the house, and just the sight of her, alive and well after all, make them cease their screaming, settling in just watching her instead, like little kids at a magic show. Only a magic show doesn't make justice to the fascination and focus compelling the kids to look at their surrogate mother as she come running across their front lawn.

She is looking at them, straight at them, and though they can't see her face from so far away, they can guess that she is beyond angry with them. They should have ran, should have been in town by now, but now they are where they are, and when she turn around and look up at the house, they do too.

They almost scream again when they see the bomb balancing on the roof of their house, frozen like the rest of the world except them and Miss Peregrine, because it bring back all the fears plaguing them since the moment they saw it leaving the German plane.

"Don't scream, idiots. You're going to ruin her concentration." Enoch hiss at Emma Fiona, noticing from the looks on their faces where it was heading. "Just look ahead."

They can see that Miss Peregrine is holding her pocket watch, now, the same one she always carried with her. Her hand is performing a swift motion, twisting something on the clock, and they can see the world around them backing.

The rain that's been falling for hours is lifting off the ground and off of their soaked cloths, returning to the clouds in the sky and filling them back up, and then when all the rain is gone and the clouds have disappeared and the planes that scared them has flown backwards across the sky with the bomb returning into the stomach of one of them, then it's sunset again, only it's the wrong sunset, the sunset from the day before when there was no rain and it was so much hotter.

Anyone hardly considers the lacking logic of this, though, as they are simply happy that they are alive and their headmistress is alive and they still got a home, a safe place in a world filled with so many evils.

Miss Peregrine pass out before they've come halfway to where she's at, and though it get them all into a new wave of panic, their hearts are still beating with joy and happiness, because they know.

They know she saved them all.


	2. Epilouge

According to records, in September 1943 The Island of Cairnholm, Wales, had a population of 70 people permanently living on the island, as well as up to 20 people seasonally living there during the summer months. Of the 70 people permanently populating the island, 21 were children, 8 born on the island and somewhere between 9 and 13 which were moved in from the mainland and living in an orphanage located in a secluded part of the island.

Among the children that were born and raised on the island, though, there was at the time a teenage boy named Oscar Goal, and his big sister Lucy.

On September 3rd 1943, Lucy and Oscar had been out and about on the island for most of the day, looking for some lost sheep that went missing a few days earlier, as well as taking the opportunity to get to play with some of the children in the orphanage which they had met on their way. By the time evening came, they were heading back to town for a late supper, thinking it had been a rather good day, with not even the bomb placed normally passing over head being there to disturb their evening...

Until all of sudden they were.

The bomb planes overhead was a part of their everyday life by now, and the sudden noise didn't alarm the two children in the slightest, but what came afterwards did. None of the children living on the rocky island had ever seen such a fire, never seen the sky and the forest burning the way it did, and it scared them, terrified them, even. m

The orange light of the fire would come to chase them in their dreams for the rest of their lives.

On the 3rd of September 1943, Oscar and Lucy Goal were just terrified children for the first time experiencing the affects of the second World War first-hand, and had they been any other children, they would surely have been running away from the smoke and fire rising towards the sky as fast as their legs could carry them, but they didn't.

They were Cairnholm children, even when terrified raised to be tough as nails, and instead of continuing home, they ran towards where the bomb had hit, equal parts excited and terrified and oh so wanting to see what had happened, what it was that had been hit and put on fire.

Their journey took them further and further away from town, through the woods and the bog and up the hill, and at last there was but one place that could have been hot, if it had been where they were going that the bomb had hit.

The orphanage

No one really ever understood why anyone wished to have their orphanage placed in such a remote location, on the furthest edge of a tiny island off the Welsh coast, but it almost tripled the number of children living on the island, and they were the source of 90% of the day to day business in the town, so noone complained to much over their more or less unwelcome presence there.

Not that there was anyone to listen to their complaints, anymore.

The house and in the garden, which had been so perfectly taken care of when they were there visiting just hours before has been reduced to nothing but a smoking wreckage, and even to children can't in their wildest imagination imagining someone surviving what had taken place.

13 children and one adult, a woman the children had called Miss Peregrine, had used to live in the broken shell of a house that were now before them, making it their home and their safe heaven while the war raged out in Europe, and now, it was no one's home anymore. It was hard for them to grasp, to understand, because they had known those children, some of which they'd even been playing with the very same afternoon, kicking footballs and having tea parties in the garden.

They had been the sweetest people these children living on a tiny island with a population of 70 had ever known in their lives.

Now they were gone.

Suddenly, they're backing away, the violent _reality_ making fear manifest in their minds and knocking them out of their senses with panic, telling them to _run_ like they never ran before and should have done hours ago, but didn't.

Oscar only managed to run for three steps before he fall, foot tripping over an object abandoned on the lawn and mercilessly forcing him down against the ash covered ground. Despite his begging for her to stop, Lucy does not wait for her brother, and by the time he's up on his feet to see what it was that tripped him, his sister is long gone.

The boy expected the thing that tripped him to be debris from the house, bricks and stone pieces, but when he look around, the only thing laying in the burnt grass is something else altogether. Resting in his hand and colouring his palm black, is the burn remains of a teddy bear with a pink bow. Most of it is gone, but there's a little left, including large parts of the pink bow, and Oscar try to imagine who it could have belonged to. In his head, he come up with the image of a small blonde haired girl being chased by a brown haired one, identical teddy bears carried in both their arms as they played. They'd been so pretty, both the girls and the toys, and looking down at the burnt remains of one of them, a deep longing awoke in his heart.

He wanted to give it back to it's owner, however impossible that might be, because it wasn't right for a little girl to pass onto the dark and scary unknown without her teddy bear to comfort her.

Yet she had too.

Making a spur of the moment decision, Oscar hid the teddy bear inside his coat and brought it with him home, keeping it in his toy chest and only bringing it out to look at when he was all alone, secretly thinking about the children that had died that night, and who none seemed to miss.

Noone but him, that was.

Decades later, when Oscar has grown old and everyone stopped calling him anything but 'Uncle Oggie', he still got the teddy bear in his room, only he's not hiding it anymore. It was for everyone to see, now, as it stood on his windowsill in all it's ugly glory, looking out the window towards the hill and the woods, which had been the last resting place of it's original owner. He always looked at it every morning, and he noticed that his beloved sister son gave it his own sideway glance, too, when he came to help him down the stairs.

No one ever asked him why or where he got it, or why it's utterly destroyed, leaving black soot stains on the white painted windowsill even after all this long time, and Oscar didn't tell. He only kept watching it every morning.

The morning when Oscar for the first time forget to look at it when he wake up, is the morning when the boy arrive to the Island. He's an American, a tourist on vacation in Europe, and by chance, he hear him talking with his father about visiting the orphanage

Oscar watch him with suspicion, worried and confused. How could a boy, who was from as far away as America, know about the orphanage, and much less be interested in it. It didn't make sense in any way, and it gave Uncle Oggie and bad feeling in his stomach, telling him that this boy was definitely going to be trouble.

Later that day, the boy comes back to the pub covered in mud up to his knees and with only one shoe, immediately aiming for Oscar and sitting down beside him, looking him straight in the eyes.

"What happened to the people in the orphanage?" He ask, the fire in his eyes showing how badly he wanted and answer for questions he shouldn't be asking in the first place.

Oscar laughed, somewhere between absurdity and amusement that after all these years, the first one to finally ask what happened is some American little shit.

"They were killed, all of them. They were bombed by the Germans. It was too bad, really, they were very sweet children."

"No one survived?" The boy looked scared, franatic even, and Oscar wondered why it was so important to him to know the truth, if he couldn't even accept it for what it was.

"No One could have. It dropped dead center on the roof above their heads." He pause, remembering how everything looked, smoke filling the sky and the wreckage of the house set aflame by the only thing from the war that ever made it to their island. "I think...I think a boy left, earlier, though. Was going to join the army I believe, to fight for his family. Too bad he lost them later. His part in the war didn't make a difference for none after all, it seem."

The last part seem to spark recognition in his eyes, and the boy leave immediately, mumbling something about damned grandparents and Polen and cursed old houses and Oscar really don't know what's gotten loose in his head but something's gotten sideways in there because he was acting like a maniac.

Weeks later, Oscar "Uncle Oggie' Goal is dead, killed by an invisible monster he couldn't even see. His left over family is clearing out his room, of course, and his nephew immediately see the teddy bear standing there in the window, the damaged old toy that for some reason had been oh so precious to his uncle. Lifting up the old piece and looking it over from every side, he wondered what it did there on the windowsill, and his mom is telling him to get rid of it, that it gives her chills, but he feel unconvinced, like there's still something more he need to figure out about it before letting it go.

Carefully, he turn it upside down, and first then does he see the note attached there.

 _The surviver of the bomb_

 _September 3rd, 1943_


End file.
